Back in March, we posted five award-winning screenwriters discussing how they approach their craft. Personally, I find great value in hearing from successful professional screenwriters, learning about their strengths and weaknesses, finding out what works and doesn't work for them as they work on their screenplays. After originally posting about five award-winning screenwriters, we naturally had to follow that up with five more award-winning screenwriters discussing how they approach their craft because everybody loves a sequel (right?). Grab a snack, sit back and learn from screenwriters Geoffrey Fletcher, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, Sofia Coppola, Pedro Almodóvar, and Charlie Kaufman as they share their thoughts about crafting stories, writing screenplays and navigating the business.
First, we have an interview with Geoffrey Fletcher, who spent nearly a decade writing in obscurity before getting the opportunity to adapt the novel Push by Sapphire, which became the film Precious. Fletcher's screenplay earned an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. I think many of us can relate to the lessons Fletcher has learned as he worked on his craft for so long before getting his break.
Next, we have Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, who won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar along with Alexander Payne for The Descendants. In this interview from Sundance 2013, Rash and Faxon, along with actor Liam James, discuss their directorial debut, The Way, Way Back, a project they worked on for eight years, watching it come together and fall apart several times before getting the chance to direct it themselves.
Now we turn to Sofia Coppola, perhaps best known for Lost in Translation, which earned her an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay as well as an Independent Spirit Award. Coppola talks about several different aspects of her writing and directing style, including how she listens to specific music as she writes her screenplays and the progression of this technique over the course of her writing and directing career.
Moving on, we find this following interview with renowned writer/director Pedro Almodóvar, winner of numerous awards, including the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Talk to Her, one of my personal favorites in his oeuvre. Listening to the popular novels written in English that Almodóvar tried to get the rights to adapt is fascinating and imagining each of the resulting films being done in his style will certainly warp your brain for the day.
Finally, we have a short interview with Charlie Kaufman, winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Kaufman may be the most inimitable yet most relatable screenwriter for the rest of us struggling with this craft, a contradiction that seems quite fitting to me.
What lessons resonate the most for you from these screenwriter interviews? Share your thoughts with us in the Comments.
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